Unholy (41 page)

Lauzoril’s face twisted, and he shuddered. Then he turned, ran, and hurled himself over the edge of the cliff.

Nevron finished snarling an incantation. A goristro, a demon somewhat resembling a colossal minotaur, appeared in front of him. Running on its hind feet and the knuckles of its hands, it instantly charged Szass Tam.

The lich pointed his staff and spoke a word of power. The demon turned to glass and, off balance, toppled. It shattered with a prodigious crash.

Nevron started another incantation. Szass Tam turned his fleshless hand palm up and made a clutching gesture. The demon master fell, and a second Nevron, made of insubstantial phosphorescence, appeared standing over the body. For once, he didn’t look angry or contemptuous but astonished.

Szass Tam recited rhyming words, and Nevron’s ghost shrank into a pudgy creature only half as tall, with grubs wriggling in its open sores. Aoth just had time to recognize it as a mane, the weakest and lowliest form of demon, slave to every other. Then it vanished, probably to the Abyss.

Lallara whispered, and a wall of rainbows shimmered into being between Szass Tam and herself. “On further consideration,” she panted, “I do wish to take advantage of the truce you offered.”

Szass Tam laughed. “Sorry, Your Omnipotence. But you and your allies insisted on this fight, and now I intend to finish it. There aren’t going to be any more zulkirs in exile to plot against me.”

He hurled a ragged burst of shadow. The rippling colors in Lallara’s barrier grayed when it splashed against them, and then their brightness blazed anew.

Grimly aware that there was hardly any power left in it, or in him, for that matter, Aoth aimed his spear to hurl a lightningbolt. Lallara glanced up at him. “Come here,” she said.

“My attack spells won’t pass through your wall,” he said.

“Now!” she snapped.

Maybe she had a plan. He sent Jet winging in her direction. Meanwhile, Szass Tam hurled another murky blast against the shield. This time, it took longer for the colors to reassert themselves, and when they did, they were softer than before.

Jet and Aoth swooped over the failing defense and landed by Lallara. Despite its sagging wrinkles, her crone’s face looked taut with strain.

“What do we do?” asked Aoth.

She reached in a pocket, extracted a silver ring, and tossed it to him. As soon as he caught it, he felt the nature of the spell stored inside it. Under normal circumstances, it would enable the user to translate himself and a companion or two through space.

“Will this work now?” he asked. Maybe she’d figured out that with Malark’s crystal diadem and staff broken, it would.

“We couldn’t win,” Lallara gritted, “even if it did. But I’ve spent my life afflicted with idiots and incompetents, and you were never either. Go live if you can.” Szass Tam threw his power at the wall of light, staining and muting the colors, and cracks of inky darkness snaked through them. Lallara cried out as though she herself were breaking and stamped the butt of her staff against the ground.

The world seemed to fly apart, then instantly reform. Aoth and Jet found themselves still under a black sky, but one with more stars shining in it. They still perched on a high place, but a smaller one, with merlons running along the edge and other

towers rising beyond. Lallara had evidently observed how to open the door between realities when Szass Tarn did it, and she used the knowledge to return her surviving allies to the roof of the Citadel’s central keep.

Aoth felt a clench of anger. Given the choice, he wouldn’t have abandoned her.

Yet underlying the anger was a guilty relief that he had no idea how to return himself to the battlefield, for after all, she was right. They had no hope of beating Szass Tam. Maybe at the start of the fight it had been otherwise, but then the scales tipped against them.

“What now?” asked Jet.

“Fly out over the city,” said Aoth. “The direction doesn’t matter.”

Once they passed beyond the confines of the castle and its wards, he invoked the magic of the ring.

The world shattered and reassembled itself yet again, and then he and the griffon were soaring above the gleaming black expanse of the Lapendrar. They flew west, over the ranks of their own army, and saw that the autharch’s host was withdrawing.

Aoth felt some of the tension drain out of his body. This battle at least appeared to have gone about as well as anyone could have expected. Now, if only Szass Tam didn’t come after him!

And in fact, when he peered around, he couldn’t see any sign of such a pursuit. He supposed it made sense. He and his companions hadn’t succeeded in destroying the lich, but surely they’d hurt him badly enough to make him think twice about starting a new fight with an entire army, spent and bloodied though it was. Especially considering that, as he’d made plain, it was the zulkirs he chiefly wanted to kill.

Aoth surveyed the ground and spotted Jhesrhi, Khouryn, and Gaedynn standing together. Responding to his unspoken desire, Jet furled his wings to land beside them.

Gaedynn grinned at the new arrivals. “You missed all the excitement.”

Aoth dredged up a smile of his own. “Well, maybe not all of it.”

28 Nightal, The Year of the Dark Circle (1478 DR)

Earlier that night, processions had wound through the streets of Lyrabar, the participants singing hymns as they went to visit their dead. But when Aoth pushed open the squeaking wrought-iron gate to the dilapidated little graveyard, he saw that here at least, people had already said their prayers, cried their tears, left their offerings, and departed. Some of the votive candles were still flickering, although a chill autumn breeze was blowing them out one and two at a time.

Aoth spotted a weather-stained limestone bench and flopped on top of it. He pulled the cork from the jug he’d brought with him, took a swig, and savored the burn as the cheap brandy went down.

He’d succeeded in extricating what remained of the Brorher-hood and the council’s legions from Thay without the necessity of another battle, only to find that it didn’t earn him an excess

of gratitude back in the Wizard’s Reach. He supposed he understood. If one chose to look at it uncharitably, he’d gotten all four zulkirs killed and the expeditionary force decimated. And aside from some plunder, all anyone had to show for it was his assurance that the venture had neutralized a threat many people never credited or comprehended in the first place.

In truth, he wouldn’t have wanted to stay in the Reach even if the remaining Red Wizards had offered to extend his contract. With the zulkirs dead, a struggle for supremacy began, and that, combined with the damage to the legions, was likely to delivet the realm into the hands of Aglarond within a year or two. He saw little point in trying to stem the tide.

So, by dint of threat, he’d extracted as much money from the archmages’ heirs as he could—about half of what Lallara and her peers had promised—and accepted an offer of employment from the Grand Council of Impiltur, where even a sadly diminished sellsword company could earn its keep by chasing brigands and covens of demon-worshippers.

And the seasons turned, and the Feast of the Moon arrived. The Brothers of the Griffon couldn’t visit the resting places of their dead—the graves and pyres were scattered across the East— so they sat around their campfires trading memories of the fallen and drinking to them too.

Aoth remained with the celebration for a while. But gradually he realized he wanted to remember comrades whom, he imagined, only he mourned. Accordingly, he took his leave and, weaving a trifle, wandered in search of a place where he could be alone. The graveyard looked like it would do.

By the Black Flame, he missed Bareris and Mirror! He could only pray that true death was treating them more kindly than undeath ever had.

To his surprise, he realized he even missed the zulkirs. They’d been heartless and tyrannical, but his service to them

had made him the man he was, and in the end, they’d given their lives to foil the designs of a far greater monster than themselves.

He likewise mourned the Thay of his youth, so green and rich and proud. Now, though towns and farms remained, it was in large measure a haunted wasteland, and the vilest haunters were the very lords Szass Tam had raised up to rule over the living. These masters oppressed them mercilessly and tortured and killed them merely for their sport.

A hand settled gingerly on Aoth’s shoulder. Startled, he looked around. Jhesrhi had come up behind him, and Khouryn, Gaedynn, and Jet stood behind her. The griffon’s crimson eyes gleamed in the dark.

Since Aoth knew how Jhesrhi hated to touch or be touched, her gesture moved him. He wanted to cover her fingers with his own but knew that would only make the contact even more unpleasant for her.

“We grieve for Bareris and Mirror too,” she said.

“Yes,” Khouryn said. “Undead or not, they were all right.”

“They saved my life more times than I can count,” said Aoth. “Who knows, at the end, maybe they saved everybody’s life.”

“So let’s drink to them,” said Gaedynn. “Unless you really would rather do it alone.”

“No.” Aoth raised the jug in a salute, took another swig, then handed it to Jhesrhi.

As they drained the liquor, Aoth felt his spirits lift. Surely, if there was any justice at all in the universe—an open question, but still—Bareris and Tammith were together, and Mirror sat at the right hand of his god.

Aoth himself was still alive and still possessed of staunch friends. He’d tarnished his hard-earned reputation, and the company he’d spent decades building was a shadow of its former self, but so what? He’d just have to build them again.

Khouryn tilted the jug until it was nearly upside down. Aoth stood up. “If that one’s empty, let’s go find another.”

Szass Tam floated between the mountaintop and the black, all-but-starless sky and chanted. The Dread Rings fed him power of a sort, and he tried doggedly to shape it into the proper configurations. Invariably, it dissolved within his grasp, and eventually he concluded it always would.

As he drifted to the ground, he felt an urge to take his newly fashioned crystal staff and hit something. But he realized the impulse was childish and unworthy of him. Especially since he’d known before he started that Thay was no longer capable of providing the energies required for the Unmaking.

It was just that there was a difference between the knowledge derived from study and analysis and that obtained through direct experience. The former was occasionally mistaken, the latter, never, and so he’d deemed it worthwhile to conduct the experiment. Now that he had, he understood what he had to do.

He had nine hundred years left before Bane would return to enforce the terms of their bargain and carry him off into servitude. Plenty of time to strengthen his legions, conquer a neighboring realm or two, and construct a new system of Dread Rings.

Plenty of time, but that was no reason to put off getting started. His stride was brisk as he stepped from the mountain onto the apex of the Citadel.

Unholy

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